University of Virginia Library

THE ANNEX

The crafts performed in the annex

The Annex (figs. 419 and 421) is as long as the main house,
but furnished with a single aisle along its southern side
and has a total depth of only 27½ feet. It is subdivided by
cross partitions into three equal spaces, which contain the
workshops of "goldsmiths" (aurifices), "blacksmiths"
(fabri feram̄torum), and "fullers" (fullones) and in the rear
along the outer wall "their bedrooms" (eorundem mansiunculae).
The annex has no separate entrance. It is accessible
through the main building, from which it is separated by a
courtyard 10 feet wide.

[ILLUSTRATION]

423. BOOKS OF HOURS (1460-1480), LABORS OF THE MONTH OF AUGUST

MUSÉE CONDÉ, CHANTILLY. MS. 1362

[courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]

Coopers work in the village street. Some are hammering hoops of tubs and barrels into final position with wooden mallets and wedges. Others
plane and bevel staves on benches. Two sets of finished barrels are ready for shipment. They have the same shape as the small barrels drawn in
the Cellar of the Plan of St. Gall (fig. I 225) and on the Roman and medieval monuments shown in figs. I 233 and I 234.

The manuscript, once belonging to Adelaide of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy and mother of Louis XV, is from the school of Jean Foucquet.

It is one of a small group of manuscripts which frame the script with a narrative, rather than an ornamental, surround. (For other illustrations
by the same hand in the same manuscript, see Bouissounouse, 1925, pl. i-xxiv.)

[ILLUSTRATION]

424. LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340)

LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM. ADD. MS. 42130, FOL. 163

The simple caisson, an old standard for cargo carts, appears on Trajan's column and in the Bayeux Tapestry, attesting the practicality of the
form over many centuries. As farm cart it might with equal ease haul tuns, loose hay, bushels of turnips; the empty cart of the psalter reveals
braided wattle sides that may have been removeable. Its spiked wheels and spike-shod horses indicate this cart type was intended for heavy
work. If not entirely fanciful, the wheel diameter, compared with the size of the draft animals, may afford some notion of the size such a cart
might attain.

To put the workshops of the smiths and fullers under a
separate roof and segregate them from the other craftsmen
by an open court is an extremely sensible procedure. The
fullers need pits for lye and fuller's clay. And the work of
the smiths is associated with enervating noise and high intensity
fires. Their equipment is heavier and requires more
floor space than many of the other crafts. Hildemar lists as
the blacksmiths' tools, the "hammer" (malleus), the "anvil"
(incus), the "prongs" (forcipes), the "bellows" (follis), the
"turning wheel" (rota), the "grapple hook" (foscina), and
the "hearth" (focus),[431] and tells us that with these they
manufacture "swords, lances, hoes, axes, and files."[432] The
task of the fullers was to cleanse, shrink, and thicken clothes
by moisture, heat, and pressure. Their work was dependent
on access to open pits where the cloth could be soaked in
water mixed with detergents (fuller's clay) absorbing the
grease and oil of the cloth. There is no indication on the
Plan of St. Gall that this work was mechanized, unless the
fullers were permitted to use one of the water-powered
triphammers in the nearby Mortar House for this work.[433]

Absence of tailors and weavers

Attention must also be drawn to the absence of facilities
for tailors (sartores). This may suggest that the monks themselves
did the main work of cutting and tailoring clothes in
the large Vestiary that occupied the floor above the Refectory—a
conjecture that is corroborated by a remark in
Hildemar's commentary to the Rule of St. Benedict. It is
said there that the monks who are engaged in tailoring
clothes will have to disrupt their work instantly when the
bell for the divine service is struck, and must not even pull
the needle, awl, and thread (seta, literally "bristle" or
"bristly hair") out of the piece of cloth or leather on which
they are working.[434]

Lastly, it must be noted that the monastery has no
facilities for weaving. This is easily explained, because
weaving was historically a craft performed by women[435] who,
of course, had no place in a monastic settlement for men.
Moreover, it is quite possible that most of the monks'
clothing was not woven, but produced by the process of
felting, i.e., the bringing together of masses of loose fibers

[ILLUSTRATION]

425.A PLAN OF ST. GALL. HOUSE FOR COOPERS & WHEELWRIGHTS & BREWERS' GRANARY

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

The association of two workshops with a granary is seemingly in recognition of the size of the space required for all three activities: no less
than a barn-size structure would provide sufficient floor space for making large barrels and utility carts and fittings and a threshing floor.
Temporary storage of unfinished and damaged carts and barrels was probably one consideration determining the size of this building. We have
reconstructed this house according to the same criteria that guided that of the Annex of the Great Collective Workshop and that of the Abbot's
House.

of wool under the combined influence of heat, moisture,
and friction until they became firmly interlocked in every
direction. This task, of course, could be performed by the
fullers.

It is an interesting commentary on the social and economic
structure of the period that it is within this primarily
industrial environment, composed of laymen and serfs, that
we also find the noble craftsmen, the goldsmiths, who furnished
the church with its sacred vessels and reliquaries
and the library with its precious jeweled covers for books.

The Great Collective Workshop is an impressive example
of industrial organization. Contracting into one establishment
practically all the services required for the community's
material survival, it reveals on the level of the service
building the same propensity for systematic architectural
integration which in the layout of the Church had led to a
combination of liturgical functions that had formerly been
distributed over separate sanctuaries.[436] The same spirit had
produced an equally ingenious combination of functions in
the great architectural complex that encompasses the
Novitiate and the Infirmary.[437]